NAPE Member Frank Scalzo is a Behavioral Health Practitioner at the Community Corrections Center in Lincoln. When Frank realized that most of his colleagues had received their 2021 performance evaluations and he had not, he reached out to his supervisor, who delayed the meeting discussing the evaluation multiple times. Frank finally met with his supervisor to discuss the evaluation on April 13, and he received an unsatisfactory score overall.
One of the many protections for performance evaluations established in our NAPE contract is a deadline to complete evaluations. All evaluations for the previous calendar year must be completed by April 1. If an employee’s evaluation is not complete by this date, our contract ensures that the employee must be rated satisfactory. Since Frank’s evaluation was not presented to him until April 13, the deadline was missed, but he was still rated unsatisfactory in violation of our contract.
Frank reached out to NAPE field staff when he received the unsatisfactory evaluation, and a grievance was filed on his behalf. The grievance alleged that since Frank’s evaluation was not complete by the April 1 deadline, he must be rated satisfactory and receive his performance based step increase on July 1. The Department of Corrections agreed that the deadline was missed in violation of the contract, and that Frank was entitled to a satisfactory evaluation. NDCS changed the evaluation to a satisfactory score and will ensure he receives his step increase on July 1.